For a full review of Turkish Airlines 787 business class, see Tim’s review here. In this mini-review, I compare my experience to Tim’s. Short result: Tim had a better flight.
I finally had a chance to fly Turkish’s new route from Detroit to Istanbul in business class (see this post for details about how I booked it). Overall, I was disappointed. I expected better. On a previous Turkish flight I had been blown away by the food that was offered on the one hour flight from Sofia to Istanbul (see this post for details). And Tim had recently raved about his long-haul Turkish flight (Istanbul to Seattle). His food and service experience was excellent. Tim wrote that “the highlight was the delightful mezze offering. Both the mezze and dessert services are from linen-topped trolleys that are wheeled down the aisles, allowing passenger to look at the various items and choose whatever (and how much) they’d like.” On my Detroit to Istanbul flight, however, not only was there no mezze option on the menu, but no one pushed a single trolley. And while service on my wife’s aisle was very good, it was awful on my side. They should think about putting the better flight attendants on the blogger side of the plane ;).
Despite my complaints, the overall experience was actually good. The food was decent (but not as good as I had expected). The seats were comfortable and flight attendants proactively set up extra padding on each seat for sleeping. And we loved the Ferragamo amenity kits.
The food experience is probably much better on the daytime flight from Istanbul to Detroit than the night-time flight from Detroit to Istanbul, but I haven’t had a chance to try that direction yet.
Overall, I would still happily fly this route again, especially now that my expectations are in check. For me, this is probably the single most convenient flight from Detroit to Europe. It leaves around 8pm and flies for about 10 hours. This combination is great because you have enough time to have a meal before settling in for sleep and then you have plenty of time to sleep before arriving in Istanbul.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Comfortable seats with deep footwells
- Padded bedding
- Free wifi in business class
- Good in-flight entertainment options
- Excellent Ferragamo amenity kits
Cons
- Service on my side of the aisle was terrible:
- The flight attendant forgot to take my drink order
- He later forgot to offer me bread with my meal
- No one ever, ever removed trash unless I put it on the dishes to be removed
- No mezze course was offered
- We were only proactively given one small bottle of water for the entire flight (but extra bottles were available in the front of the plane)
- Very little near-seat storage
Photos
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